Paddy, I know that you are an advocate of the non gimmicked effects, but please stop all the hate on gimmicks.

yes, gimmicks will make a trick easier to perform for a magician, but that does not mean it is not real magic. Most of the time a magician will get bigger reactions from an audience with gimmicked effects because more often than not gimmicks allow for an even more impossible miralce to take place.

If you keep posting about how you don't use gimmicks and that gimmicks are for novices and not real magicians than you are dead wrong. I use a few gimmicks in my routines. Spectators should never see how a trick is done if practiced, so why care if the effect was done using a device, its all the same to the audience.

Just make sure when you use them that you can end clean or you are able to move on to another non gimmicked effect smoothly, like that other poster stated

Gimmick and non gimmicked tricks don't determine who is and who isn't a magician. A real magician has showmanship and charisma. He is someone who can take an effect and make it larger than what it is supposed to be through his presence.

Madmartigan, That is an excellent point that you made. In fact, that is what I keep saying that magic is all presentation. The reason I am so much against gimmicks is that there are so many kids on this forum that buy a scotch and soda or a similar very easy trick and call themselves a magician. They then think they can go make themselves into another Copperfield because they can do a gimmick.

Agree 100% with Exodus. Personally, I know Skinner's version and the "traditional" method, it's nice to have both.

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They then think they can go make themselves into another Copperfield because they can do a gimmick.

So let them think that. Truth me told, if performed properly, the spectators should never know a gimmick is being used... in THEIR minds, it's all the same. Gimmicks are extremely useful in certain situations and there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. There's MUCH more to magic than the difficulty of technical aspects of a trick. I would much rather watch a well thought-out routine using a gimmick by a personable performer than the most incredibly technical sleight of hand performed by someone who performs to stroke his or her own ego.

I keep Skinner's for when I am working on a proffesional-type performance. I keep the other just incase I am asked to do it again when I am not prepared. It is like comparing apples to oranges, but if I had to choose, I like the ungimmicked better.

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